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The same aluminum block has seen four different generations of silicon. Wachiwit/Getty Images Put the first-gen Apple Mac Studio next to the newly released M5 Ultra, and you’d struggle to tell them apart on looks alone. Apple has stuck with the same 7.7-inch square of aluminum, standing at 3.7 inches tall, for the fourth generation in a row. But what’s inside has changed fundamentally since the Studio’s 2022 inception. That first-gen M1 Ultra topped out at a paltry-by-comparison 128GB versus the M5 Ultra’s 512GB, which also moves data at 1.2TB/s, nearly 50 percent higher than what…

Few things age worse than internet hysteria, unlike the hybrid batteries still racking up fares (and miles) in your local cab company’s fleet of aging Toyota Priuses. When early hybrids started to proliferate in the marketplace, online comment sections were brimming with warnings and predictions. People speculated about mass battery failures, ruinous repair bills, and landfills overflowing with toxic cells, among other disasters. Anything’s possible when you make things up. Here in reality, hybrids had the exact opposite future. Today, they’re routinely cited as the most dependable powertrain architecture on the road, and they generate some of the highest owner…

Tesla Model 3 (Source: Tesla) UK EV sales hit a new all-time record in September. The country registered 99,199 battery-electric cars last month, up 36.3% from a year ago and good for 28.3% of the market, according to preliminary data released today by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Tesla’s Model 3 was the best-selling EV and the second best-selling car overall. And yet the auto industry’s own lobby group is using the record month to argue that the UK’s EV targets are too hard. Plug-ins are carrying the UK car market September is a big month in…

The Drive 🤝 your inbox. Every weekday The Daily Brief wraps up the biggest stories and our exclusive reporting on the auto industry and car culture. Kei trucks are the antithesis of big, brawny American trucks, which makes them great conversation pieces as well as useful tools. They can fit places a full-size pickup never would, and consume a fraction of the fuel. They are a bit limited when it comes to payload, though. Thankfully, there are other options for trucks that reflect Japan’s unique automotive culture. First spotted by patina.cars on Instagram, this 1997 Chevrolet C3500 dually rollback is…

BMW revealed the all-new, all-electric i3 just a few days ago, and the company has now achieved yet another major milestone. The millionth M car has just rolled off the assembly line at its Munich plant, an M3 draped in a special, one-off finish called Individual Fire Orange III. In an official ceremony at the production facility, plant director Peter Weber handed the keys over to M Division CEO Frank van Meel as a symbolic gesture. Then it came time to look at what the future holds, and what better way to celebrate one million Ms than a preview of…

David Robinson used to write the safety reports that accompanied every major model release at OpenAI. This week, he resigned from his position and is now speaking out in an editorial in The Atlantic.It’s understandable if you’re feeling a bit cynical about everyone suddenly coming out of the woodwork to warn about how dangerous the thing they helped build is. They did, after all, make this mess. But that doesn’t mean we should discount their warnings.Robinson says that the culture in industry is fundamentally broken. That this is a deeper issue than simply slapping a few new rules or regulations…

You probably already have a few hiding in plain sight. Nor Gal/Shutterstock Gear makers will gladly sell you a hundred different add-ons to improve your sound system. To this day, it’s possible to buy gold-plated audio cables, even though they can’t really improve digital audio — you’re either getting a clean data signal or you’re not. On the short list of products to take seriously is an amplifier, whether you’re building a home theater or your own private music sanctuary. There’s a reason your local boutique audio store has been selling them for decades. You shouldn’t automatically…

When it comes to challenging the West in terms of outright performance, the Acura NSX is one of Japan’s greatest success stories. With development input from one of the greatest racing drivers in history, Ayrton Senna, and one of the most commanding auto manufacturers on the case, the NSX was always going to be a threat. The usable supercar ended up not only giving the likes of Ferrari and Porsche something to think about from a performance standpoint, but it is also one of the most reliable and usable supercars ever built. Interestingly though, one of the cheapest ways of…

Swedish heavy equipment brand HUDDIG has given its 1370 hybrid wheel loader platform a major battery upgrade for the new model year, boosting its battery capacity from 44 kWh to fully 61 kWh – an impressive, 40% upgrade! HUDDIG’s 1370 TIGON hybrid is an incredibly flexible machine that can be equipped for a wide range of work. In addition to being able to do everything a conventional wheel loader can do, it can be fitted with a loader-mounted crane (LCC), a bucket lift with an insulated basket, and even be operated via remote control. The killer app for this machine,…

The Drive 🤝 your inbox. Every weekday The Daily Brief wraps up the biggest stories and our exclusive reporting on the auto industry and car culture. The Ferrari F355, among other desirable and less-desirable vehicles, will being making its Gran Turismo 7 debut when the first half of the game’s big Spec IV update lands October 15. Today we got a peek at the next content drop, thanks to a trailer and some footage shared during the game’s esports livestream this weekend out of Singapore. Competitors raced at Sugo—a new track that will also debut in GT7 in October—and it…